The following day I went to film the ruins of Richebourg St. Vaaste. What an awful spectacle! A repetition of the horrors of Ypres on a smaller scale. Nothing left, only the bare skeletons of the houses and the church. With great difficulty, I managed to climb to the top of the ruined tower, and filmed the town from that point. I was told by an observation officer to keep low, as the Germans had the church still under fire. Naturally I did so, not wishing for a shell that might bring the tower down, and myself with it. Remarkable to relate, the figure of Christ upon the Cross was untouched in the midst of this terrible scene of devastation. Subsequently the tower was completely destroyed by German shells. Hearing that the Canadian guns were going to bombard Petite Douve, a large farmstead which the Germans had fortified with machine-guns and snipers, I started off from headquarters in the company of a lieutenant-colonel and a captain. A few passing remarks on the conditions of the road as we went along to Hill 63 will be interesting. No matter where one looked there was mud and water. In several places the roads were flooded to a depth of six inches, and our cars several times sank above the front axle in hidden shell-holes. The whole district was pitted with them. Entire sections of artillery were stuck in the mud on the roadside, and all the efforts of the men failed to move them. All around us hidden guns, 4.5 and 9.2, were hurtling their messengers of death with a monotonous regularity. Passing a signpost, marked "Hyde Park Corner," which looked incongruous in such a place, we entered Ploegsteert Wood. But what a change! It was as if one had suddenly left France and dropped unceremoniously into the western woods of America, in the times of the old pioneers. By the wood-side, as far as one could see, stretched a series of log-huts. To the right the same scene unfolded itself. Our cars came to a stop. Then I had a chance to study the settings more closely. [Illustration: CHOOSING A POSITION FOR MY CAMERA IN THE FRONT LINE TRENCH AT PICANTIN, WITH THE GUARDS. WINTER, 1915-16] What a picture! Amidst all the glamour of war, these huts, surrounded by tall poplars, which stood grim, gaunt and leafless--in many places branchless, owing to the enemies' shells, which tore their way through them--presented the most picturesque scene I had come across for many a long day. Upon the boards fixed over the doorposts were written the names of familiar London places. As the time of the bombardment was drawing near I could not stay at the moment to film anything, but decided to do so at an early opportunity.